


empty smiles (dead inside)

by amako



Series: ShikaSakuWeek Hanami 2019 [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Captivity, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Recovery, Trauma, all the bad stuff happens off screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 11:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18248510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amako/pseuds/amako
Summary: Shikamaru died two years ago. Since that day, living has been the hardest thing he's ever had to do.





	empty smiles (dead inside)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ShikaSaku Hanami 2019  
> Day 3: closed doors and empty smiles
> 
> this is nothing but angst, for real. i had that idea like a year ago but never found the right tone for it. guess you're in for a treat today.

Some days, he feels like Kakashi. Since he retired from teaching, the man spends even more time at the Memorial Stone, staring at the carvings with a blank look and defeated shoulders. Shikamaru can emphasize. He died the day the report came in. His lungs still work, his heart still pumps blood through his veins, but he is dead.

Every day, at dusk, he joins the chūnin on guard duty in front of the gates. He stays there until the moon is high enough to light the forest's edge, until the stars are shining bright over his head. Then he patrols around the wall and into the forest, for a few more hours. When dawn starts fighting against the dark, he goes home to sleep.

For the three or four hours he gets of rest, he's also _graced_ with plenty enough nightmares to wake him up several times during his short sleep. Exhausted, he leaves the house to go to work, every morning just a little more convinced that life isn't worth suffering like this.

As soon as the report arrived, he quit his position in the Hokage's office and forfeited his place in ANBU. There's no way he'll keep jobs that mean he'd have responsibilities or long missions that would take him away from his daily patrols. He took a position in the Inuzuka kennels, that Kiba offered him after they all heard the news and Shikamaru quit.

He works with Hana half of the time, using the Nara herbs and poultices to help heal the dogs she takes care of. The other half, he simply feeds them, cleans the kennels, or lets the pups out to play in the gigantic courtyard of the Compound. It's easy, rewarding work that makes him feel like he's doing something right. The pups adore him, and Hana has offered multiple time to have him adopt one of the smaller dogs.

He knows how much of an honour that it, to be offered the responsibility of an Inuzuka dog. He can't accept. He can't take care of a living being when some days, the only thing stopping him from drinking the vial of poison he always keeps in his flack jacket is that he wouldn't be able to patrol the walls anymore.

He wakes up, he goes to the kennels, he looks longingly at the kunai on his belt, he joins the guards, he patrols the forest, he comes home, he has nightmares.

He wakes up.

The picture on his nightstand stares back at him, his own wide smile so foreign to him now, and next to him... she's laughing, so much her eyes are closed in mirth. He had rattled a sakura tree above her, all the petals had rained on her head and she ended up covered in pink flowers. One petal had even landed on her nose.

It was Tenten, who was taking pictures to decorate her home, that had taken the portrait. It's the first picture they had printed when they moved in together. It was also the last time he saw Sakura. The day after they moved into their traditional house, she was sent on a classified mission and captured on the first day.

That was two years ago.

Since, the details of the mission were all revealed to the entire shinobi force. Sakura is an asset of the likes Konoha can't lose, because she's the only one capable of training medics for the fields. With Tsunade gone, the shinobi don't have a single medic left in the village and it shows. The death rate in missions has been steadily increasing over the last two years.

But no matter the amount of classified information leaked to the rest of the force, no one was able to locate the exact location of her disappearance, because she never actually made it to the rendezvous point where her contact was waiting for her. On top of that, though an organization had claimed the kidnapping, no demands had been made. Konoha had been informed the organization was after Sakura, and Sakura alone, and nothing the village could do would be worth a quarter of her presence with them.

That message came from a network of independent mercenaries who passed on the scroll from village to village until the whole trail was lost. They were able to trace it back to a small village in Kiri, but the mercenary who traded the scroll there was killed, and the trail was cut short.

Two years, and not a single clue. Not a single word. And Shikamaru died.

 

On the last day of Rainsbloom, a caravan of traders arrives in Konoha. They deal mainly with the civilian district, where they deliver fabrics that the seamstresses will turn into clothing for the whole village. This time, the first cart doesn't stop at the civilian district, but continues further into the village, until it's too big to fit in the streets. The merchants come out, two men wearing the cream, stripped clothing of Kiri.

They go around the cart, reaching for the back curtains, under the curious stares of the people going to the market. One of the men goes inside, and when he comes out, it's with his arms supporting the waist and shoulders of Haruno Sakura.

Everyone knows her face, not only from the post-war posters celebrating the heroes of the final battle, but because whoever goes out of the village is encouraged to look for her and ask around. There is a picture of her smiling face in every trader, every traveller, every shinobi's wallet who leaves Konoha.

There is complete silence in the street, as the two merchants support her from both sides, helping her walk the few metres left until the market place gives way to the hospital's steps. The world has stopped moving, watching the return of one of the great heroes of the war, of Titan Sakura.

As soon as they've disappeared inside, a frenzy spreads through the street, onto the next ones, until it's all that's talked about in the village. With shinobi walking around, and ANBU patrolling in the shadows, it's barely a few minutes after their arrival that the Hokage hears about it.

He immediately sends one of his guards to Shikamaru's house, and leaves for the hospital. The word has spread enough that everyone who cares about Sakura should already know she's back.

 

 _She's back_.

It's all Shikamaru can think about as he rushes to the hospital, Kiba right behind him. They had received the news at the same time, and far from him the idea of stopping anyone from seeing her. If he got to see her first.

No one asks questions as he barges in, straight to intensive care where he knows she's been admitted. At the service's entrance, a guard is posted, and another one at a door further down the corridor. He doesn't stop to think before knocking and entering. The consequences, he can care about later. This is not the time for hesitation.

There are two doctors around the bed, and a nurse setting up an I.V bag, while another wraps her ribs. There are already bandages on her arms, and both her left knee and right ankle are set in a cast.

 

“Nara-san?”

“Yeah,” he replies without paying attention, his eyes not leaving her face for a second. She looks old, he notices, and not in the poetic, beautiful way. No metaphors on the wrinkles around her eyes, and the damaged skin of her cheeks. It looks like scar tissue, except there is no wound, so it speaks of prolonged exposure to something that harmed her skin, until it build up layers of tougher cells to protect itself.

“I have to ask that your friend stay outside. If it was up to me, you would even be allowed in the room right now.”

Kiba nods, and closes the door behind him. “What's going on? Why is she... like this?” Shikamaru asks, staring at her unfazed expression, focused on the paper and pencil in her hands.

 

The doctor sighs, rubbing her eyes before dropping her clipboard on the covers, next to Sakura's foot.

 

“From the scar tissue and preliminary scans, we can safely say there isn't a single day in the last two years she wasn't subjected to physical trauma. All her major bones have been broken and set multiple times, with care, but it still left some massive bone outgrowth. Most of her internal organs are failing but Hatori-sensei is currently taking care of that,” she says, pointing at the other doctor whose hands are alight with green.

 

She takes back her clipboard, and hands it to him.

 

“You'll get the details from this, but she has lung damage from water that got inside, probably because of waterboarding. Her stomach doesn't work properly, though it doesn't look like she was starved. Her heart is weak from shock torture, her kidneys must be hurting her like crazy, she has such a low level of hormones she's developing osteoporosis and her reproductive system has stopped working. Frankly, this is a nightmare. The list is endless.”

 

He tries to remember how to breathe.

He can't.

 

“And then, there's that.”

 

She points to the paper, laid down on the bed spread. Sakura is doodling stick figures surrounded by blocky, simplified trees.

 

“Can I get you some water?” the doctor asks in a soothing but clear voice.

“012601.”

“Would you like something to eat?”

“Identification number 012601.”

“Haruno-sensei, are you hungry?”

Her head shots up but she doesn't look at the doctor. “Haruno Sakura, Konoha Shinobi Force, Identification number 012601.”

“We brought your husband. Look at him.”

 

Sakura drops her gaze to the man working on her stomach and stares, stares, stares, unblinking.

 

“You are thirsty,” the doctor says like an order. “Can I get you some water?”

 

Sakura nods.

 

“You are hungry. Would you like something to eat?”

 

Sakura nods.

 

“You are neither thirsty no hungry, you can return to your drawing.”

 

Sakura nods, picks up her pencil, and starts drawing again.

 

“You see the problem. Ask a question and she will only reply with her ID, the length of information matching what the answer would be. You say her name and she'll repeat the whole sentence. You order something, she agrees. But you can't make her do anything.”

 

Shikamaru drops into a chair, and he stares at this incredible woman who owns his heart.

 

“What do we do?”

“This is a defence mechanism she built over two years of torture, that leads me to believe she never gave up anything. Maybe she escaped, maybe they let her go. What we do, is what you'd do with your baby who doesn't know how to speak. We teach her.”

“H-how long is this going to take?”

The doctor sends him a look of profound pity. “Maybe forever.”

 

After a few weeks, she'll allowed back home. Some weird muscle memory plays with her mind, and sometimes he'll find her in her old office, endlessly browsing a case file without looking at it, or she'll be in the bath for hours before he finds the heart to get her out. He can sometimes guess what she wants to say by the words she picks from her ID, but it's a gamble at best.

Most of the time, he lets her play in the garden or buys her clay that she seems to adore, then watches her make and destroy until she forgets that she should wet the clay and it dries out in her hands.

She's never upset, she never cries. She lets him touch her without any problems, she's not picky about food and doesn't fear water. It's like she doesn't have any triggers, any memory from her time in captivity.

They sleep in the same bed, because he's selfish and he wakes up at night from nightmares so horrifying he wants to claw himself out of his own skin. And it's not like she minds.

She doesn't mind anything.

Shikamaru doesn't feel like he's dead anymore. It's having her back that's killing him.

 


End file.
